At the time of this guide's publication, The Three-Body Problem is being adapted by two ventures. One adaptation is being produced by Netflix (in development with Game of Thrones's David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and The Terror's Alexander Woo), and the other by China's Tencent Video, which has begun airing in China. While The Three-Body Problem seems like a promising property for adaptation, the road there has been mired in controversy. In 2019, Liu made controversial remarks in The New Yorker about Uyghur internment camps in Xinjiang province in China. The comments did not seem to deny the camps' existence, merely to justify these work camps or "reeducation centers." In the West, these camps are often compared to genocide and referred to as concentration camps.
“Would you rather that they be hacking away at bodies at train stations and schools in terrorist attacks? If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty." - Liu Cixin, The New Yorker, 2019
The article's author highlights the similarities between Liu's argument and that of the Chinese government. Later in the article, Liu seems to suggest that it is the author, Jiayang Fan, who has been brainwashed by Western propaganda. These comments inspired five Republican senators to write an open letter to Netflix questioning whether an adaptation of Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy could legitimize his views on work camps and the government. The letter also seems to misattribute the author's commentary on Liu as quotes from Liu himself, and the senators go on to request a statement from Netflix detailing their position on the Uyghur camps, their relationship with Liu, and how critical of his work their adaptation would be.
"Does Netflix have a policy regarding entering into contracts with public-facing individuals who, either publicly or privately, promote principles inconsistent with Netflix’s company culture and principles? If so, please outline this policy. If not, please explain why not." - Senators Blackburn, Scott, Cramer, Tillis, and McSally, 2020
Netflix responded: "Mr. Liu is...not the creator of this show. We do not agree with his comments, which are entirely unrelated to his book or this Netflix show." The senators have not pushed further.
Separate controversies arose after the murder of one of the executive producers. Xu Yao, who was CEO of The Three-Body Problem Universe, the company behind developing adaptations of Liu's work, is suspected of murdering one and poisoning perhaps two other people involved in the Netflix adaptation. Vanity Fair suggests that this may have been inspired by the fact that his colleagues were named as executive producers on the project and Xu was not. It is reported that Xu tested his poisons on various animals before poisoning his colleagues.
In contrast to the controversies surrounding this Netflix adaptation, the Chinese adaptation of The Three-Body Problem has been released to public and critical acclaim in China.
The Three-Body Problem itself is critical of Chinese bureaucracy and culture, at least during the Cultural Revolution. The chaos of that era and the self-interest of those in charge provide the conditions for Ye Wenjie to contact Trisolaris and betray humanity. The death of Commissar Lei, the ambitious bureaucrat who promotes Ye so that he can publish her work as his own, emphasizes this. If he had not promoted her, she never would have had access to the technology that allowed her to contact Trisolaris, and if he had not wished to publish Trisolaris's messages to Earth himself, she would likely not have killed him.
The women who murdered Ye Zhetai, Ye Wenjie's father, were "rusticated": a process in which urban revolutionary youths were removed from their homes and sent to remote parts of China during the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement. These youths were isolated in unfamiliar parts of the country and often became sick and malnourished, particularly as this policy coincided with a series of famines that ravaged China. When they returned to the cities, they found themselves destitute, without work or prospects, forgotten by the government that they gave up much of their lives fighting for. While the Uyghur internment camps appear more intentionally cruel than the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Liu quietly criticizes a different Chinese relocation policy by highlighting its flawed results.
Liu has stated that he does not insert his own political or philosophical viewpoints into his work, and that "So many rich implications of my work are never in my mind, but they have been produced by the interpreters" (Liu in conversation with Public Books, 2020). However, that does not mean the work is not imbued with political views. By representing a realistic, flawed, complex perspective of twentieth- and twenty-first-century China, Liu does present a view on the tragedies of the Cultural Revolution, and he highlights some of the negative factors impacting China today, despite his insistence that any criticism is unintended.
Western readers' understanding of the text will necessarily occur through a different lens than that of Liu or any Chinese reader or critic. He says to Jiayang Fan in The New Yorker: "This is why I don’t like to talk about subjects like this. The truth is you don’t really—I mean, can’t truly—understand." Western readers might not completely appreciate what he's saying or what pressures might make him say it, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it and do our own research with scientific minds. Liu might truly support the one-child policy, the Uyghur mass internment camps, or any other Chinese policy. How much this matters to you as a reader of his science fiction is entirely personal, and worth interrogating further.
